Family piano

As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

One evening I was talking to my mother about our old family piano, and she told me that it had been given to us by my grandmother (whose maiden name was Barber) The next morning when I woke up I had 2 words very clearly in my mind - 'piano' and '1908'. Later that day we played Scrabble and 5 of the first 7 letters that I had drawn at random to begin the game enabled me to spell the word 'piano'. That evening, I was working on some family history research on the Barber side of the family and discovered the record of a marriage that I had been looking for unsuccessfully for some time. This marriage, of a female Barber, had taken place in 1908. Neither I, nor any member of the family had previously had any idea of this.
Total votes: 316
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:37:13 +0000Coincidence ID:4333